Hub of the Wheel
by ivydevoss
Summary: An alternate look at what could have happened after "The Man Who Would Be King". Angst. Character death. You have been warned. Also, this story owes its entire existence and the lyrics between each section to the traditional song "Lonesome Road". There are many versions of it, but my favorite is by Joan Baez.


_Look up and down that long lonesome road  
Hang down your head and cry, my Lord  
Hang down your head and cry_

"You're no better than the things we kill!" – words stained with agony, echoing desperate against the steel joists and beams of the empty warehouse. Two figures in the half-dark, facing each other, a few feet apart, an insurmountable distance between them. The man flying his betrayal like a flag, eyes shining rage at the creature that had made them. "Lying to us, double-crossing us, working with a demon behind our backs. Samuel died for doing that – why shouldn't you?"__

The angel had no answer. He looked very small in his rumpled trench coat, not exactly like the Master of Heaven. There had been reasons, of course – there are always reasons, and they always sound good at the time – but now they had melted away into utter nothingness like ice in the glaring heat of Dean Winchester's shining soul. How was it, wondered the angel, that such a broken and self-loathing man still had this indefatigable beacon within him, guiding him on his path like the most holy lighthouse in all of creation? No angel ever had such a light.__

The silence did not break, the man turned abruptly and left, and the angel was alone.__

They say all good friends must part sometime  
Why not you and I, my Lord?  
Why not you and I?

After a few angel-free weeks had passed, Sam got up the courage to ask about it. Dean acted like he'd never heard Castiel's name. The feeling steamed almost palpably off of him, and Sam didn't ask again. Slowly they accustomed themselves to working without the benefit of heavenly grace, back to basics the way it used to be, just the two of them on the road, against the world. And now against Heaven too, although neither spoke of it. Dean didn't talk about angels, and Sam kept his mouth shut and just thought about them sometimes.__

It was funny that he'd never noticed it before, but it was only now, with the absence of Castiel sometimes so heavy in the air he had to lift his head and look around, that Sam realized Dean didn't have friends. There was him, of course, and Bobby, but they were more like family.__

Dean never told Sam what he'd said to Castiel – "You're like a brother to me" – and sometimes he violently wished he hadn't. If he could swallow those words back down, or better, chew them to shreds and spit them out, he might feel cleaner now. But he'd misplaced his trust, the way he always did, the way he promised himself he never would again. Angels had brought him nothing but misery, in the end.__

He knew he had no real friends, and he was glad of it. Less potential backstabbers in his life, that's all. The fewer the better. Root 'em out and chase 'em away. They're only weak links in the chain.__

Oh, I wish to the Lord that I'd never been born  
Or died when I was a baby, my Lord  
Or died when I was a baby

At night the missing came, which made no sense. Castiel had never come at night. But Dean lay awake and missed him fiercely, straining his eyes against the dark, imagining a rustle and the sudden soft presence of a long pale coat in the dim room. The angel didn't come to his dreams either, although Dean knew he was capable of that. He was well and truly gone. And why shouldn't he be? Dean had cursed him bitterly enough. He lay in his bed and forced himself to breathe slowly and rhythmically to avoid waking Sam, drawing air so shallowly into his lungs that he felt dizzy with despair. If only he'd never met that damned angel, if only he'd never learned of the existence of Heaven, if only he'd never gone to Hell – if only Castiel had left him there.__

I would not be here eating this cold corn bread  
And supping this salty gravy, my Lord  
And supping this salty gravy

Weeks turned into months. Dean didn't eat burgers anymore. There were plenty of other ways to get his daily dose of red meat. Burgers were memories, and memories suck. He'd stopped eating them when he'd caught himself smiling one day, suddenly remembering Castiel's ecstatic expression as he ate burger after burger, sitting next to Dean in the car, right in that very seat which now only held Sam.__

Dean wondered how it might have been if the angel had fallen completely. Would it have been as hopeless as the future he'd seen, or could it have been different? Perhaps Cas wouldn't have become mired in a wretched haze of drugs and sex and self-sacrifice. Perhaps he could have been happy. He'd always found the human world confusing, but Dean could've helped him. But he wouldn't want to help a traitor, someone he couldn't trust. So it was better that Castiel was just gone. Dean wasn't even sure where he was. Back in Heaven? He didn't know. He didn't care either.__

Oh, I wish to the Lord that I've never seen your face  
Heard your lying tongue, my Lord  
Heard your lying tongue

Months turned into years. Bobby died. Both brothers pretended it didn't hurt them as much as it did, squashing the sensation of being orphaned for the second time. Sam still had some issues with himself, couldn't settle down with a girl. Dean didn't either. When Sam asked him why, Dean turned the question back on him, and they both ended up surly, so after a while they didn't discuss it anymore.__

Dean had grown to accept his inability to trust. Everything is only good for a time, then it goes bad. He'd learned this lesson young, and it kept proving itself throughout his life, at age thirty, forty, fifty, as if he were just a spoke in a turning wheel. Losing his mother as a child had set the wheel in spin. He'd felt like he was losing Sammy when his little brother headed off to college – another spin of the wheel. That loss had only been temporary, but then both of them had lost their father – another spin. More losses, Ellen, Jo, Bobby, the wheel spinning faster and faster.__

But a wheel can spin blindingly fast and still be okay as long as it has a hub. For a few years, Dean had thought he'd found the hub. He'd had faith, for the first and only time in his life. When two startlingly blue eyes had gazed piercingly into his and a low voice had told him that he had been raised from Hell on God's command, he was sure he'd found it – that solid, heavy, indisputable center around which all the madness of his life could spin freely, without ever destroying him, as long as he had this. His angel. But the angel had turned into a lying bastard like all the rest, and it turned out that Dean's wheel didn't have a hub after all. So it all spun aimlessly on, shattering along towards eventual inevitable collapse.__

You better look up and down that long lonesome road  
Hang down your head and cry, my Lord  
Hang down your head and cry

Years and more years passed, Dean got older and harder. He had nothing to do but hunt, so he kept doing it, long after he ought to have stopped. Sam tried to quit twice, once in his early thirties and once again on the eve of turning fifty. Dean raged at him the first time and they didn't talk for almost a year, until Sam came back. He'd discovered that he still couldn't make it work, life settled down in one spot. Hunting was in his blood. They patched things up and kept going, because really, what else was there to do? When Sam left the second time, Dean didn't argue. He continued on his own and had a close call, the nearest brush with Death he'd experienced in the past ten years. Sam heard about it somehow – Dean didn't know how – and came back. They kept hunting. They couldn't stop. There was nothing else for them. If they stopped anywhere for long enough, the memories might catch up with them, and that was to be avoided at all costs.__

Dean got more and more reckless as he got older, and Sam got more and more withdrawn. Dean missed his brother's laugh. He could hardly remember the way it used to come sparkling out like sunshine, long ago, before they started losing and never stopped. Losing fights, losing people, losing innocence.__

Finally it came, the day Dean had been awaiting for a long time already. It was a Wendigo, which almost felt appropriate: a classic monster, not some spawn of Hell or of Heaven; and one of the first things he and Sam had fought together, back when they first hit the road. Now they'd been getting slower for a while, eyesight and reflexes worsening without either brother admitting it, and this time Dean simply didn't move fast enough. He was sliced down the front so cleanly and absolutely that it didn't hurt at all, at least not for the first few shocked seconds. Sam had entered the grove on the other side and they had planned to catch the thing between them in the middle, but the Wendigo apparently hadn't gotten the memo, so Sam was still somewhere far away in the trees while Dean was right here in a clearing, bleeding out._  
__  
_He had sunk to the ground, holding his stomach closed with rapidly numbing fingers before he realized that wouldn't do any good at this point. He tipped his head back slowly until it met something hard, maybe a tree trunk, and let out a slow shuddering breath. The monster had fled and he was alone, blood pumping out over his hands, soaking his shirt and jeans. He tried to listen for the distant sounds of Sam, but there was a high ringing in his ears that was slowly getting louder. It sounded familiar. It was familiar. But this time, it didn't make him wince and clap his hands to his ears. This time, it sounded like heavenly song.__

The clearing lit up, gradually, gloriously. He heard someone distantly shouting his name – "Dean? DEAN!" – but it didn't seem important. The light was everywhere, and a much closer voice, a voice like a deep bell, was also saying his name, very gently. "Hello, Dean."__

You better look up and down that long lonesome road  
Where all of your friends have gone, my Lord  
And you and I must go

~ fin ~


End file.
